


Relations

by xxSparksxx



Category: Poldark (TV 2015), Poldark - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Season/Series 03 Spoilers, Spoilers, not book canon, show canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-12
Updated: 2017-06-12
Packaged: 2018-11-13 06:19:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11178849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xxSparksxx/pseuds/xxSparksxx
Summary: Relation (noun):1) the way in which two or more people or things are connected; a thing’s effect on or relevance to another2) The way in which two or more people or groups feel about and behave towards each other3) A person who is connected by blood or marriage; a relativeA conversation in words and actions, after Drake’s first visit to Nampara. SPOILERS for 3.01.





	Relations

**Author's Note:**

> Do not read if you have not seen 3.01. Spoilers within. This is specifically written for tv!canon, not book!canon.
> 
> Beta-read by the wonderful mmmuse.

Demelza wasn’t in bed when Ross reached their bedroom.

He paused in the doorway, watching as she brushed her hair, standing by the window and gazing out into the night. The candlelight made the rich red of her hair turn into a dozen shades of gold and copper. Her arm moved regularly, rhythmically, though she seemed to be paying no attention to it. Ross thought about going to her, taking the brush from her hand and taking over the task himself. He had often brushed her hair, in the first years of their marriage. He remembered lazy evenings here in their room, Demelza perched on a stool or on the floor at his feet, content to let him brush and brush long after her hair was smooth and silky against his fingers. When had they let the habit slip? When had he? After the loss of Julia perhaps. Or before then. He had been so grievously disappointed in Demelza over her meddling with Verity and Blamey, and the repercussions for the Carnmore Copper Company. He had felt unable to trust her. He’d loved her no less, but for a while he had barely been able to look at her. He had seen, every time he did so, the faces of those who had come to ruin because of Carnmore’s failure. 

Since then, they had shared greater or lesser affections, but Ross had never resumed the frequent habit of brushing her hair at night, before they went to bed. For a time, of course, he had not gone to bed with her at all, for sleep or for anything else. She had banished him – and he understood why. That time was over now, thank goodness, but still there were barriers between them. There was a distance. His desire for her had not diminished, nor – it seemed – had hers for him, but there was something lacking in it, still. 

The tenderness had gone. His fault, or hers? Ross couldn’t say. Both, maybe. After that first night back in her bed, Ross had tried to show her that he was determined to build their life together afresh, but tender touches and affections did not come easily to him these days, and Demelza sometimes flinched away if he made an attempt. It was not, he thought, a conscious reaction. That made it hurt all the more. She had accepted him back, she had stayed with him, she knew – he hoped to God that she knew – how much he loved her and needed her. But he was still not entirely sure that she had forgiven him, and he lacked the courage to speak of it to her. He could not face trying to explain his feelings, nor did he hope for her understanding of how the goad of a Warleggan presence, three miles away, still worked in him. The sting of being barred from Trenwith, from his great-aunt, from Francis’s son. It was that, more than anything else, that troubled his thoughts and dogged his steps. But it was all tangled up with Elizabeth, and he dared not raise the subject himself. And Demelza never asked, never pressed him. Perhaps she, too, lacked courage.

Some movement betrayed him. Demelza turned her head, saw him there, and offered a smile that did not quite reach her eyes. “Ross,” she greeted. “You’re up late. Is aught amiss?”

“No, no,” Ross said, and stepped into the room, closing the door behind him. “I thought I heard Jeremy stirring, so I stopped to check.”

“He don’t often stir at night, these days,” Demelza observed. She went to her dressing table, put down the hairbrush and began to plait her hair. This, too, Ross had done for her in the past, and tied it with one of the ribbons he had given her. But now he could not, though it was not for lack of wanting. He wanted to find those tender gestures again. He missed them, missed touching Demelza’s hand or her hair or her neck. In bed all those things were freely available to him, but not in the old way. Outside the bed, the intimacy was still lost. 

“No,” he agreed, absently. “No, not often.” He came further into the room, and began to undress. “It struck me, tonight,” he remarked after a while, “how like your brother Jeremy is.” The resemblance had been striking, when Ross had opened the door to his small son’s bedroom and seen the dark head asleep on the pillow, Jeremy’s mouth parted slightly, a hand tucked close to his cheek. He couldn’t have seen it before, of course. He had only ever met Demelza’s father, not any of her brothers, and he had never noticed any similarity between Demelza’s features and those of Tom Carne. Nor was there much between Drake and his father. But between Drake and his young nephew, Jeremy Poldark…yes, Ross had seen a similarity there, and had not wholly liked it.

“Like Drake?” Demelza paused, her plait held tightly in her fingers. “Oh. No, I don’t think so. Jeremy’s always favoured you.”

Ross managed a smile that was not quite grim. “What, rash and temperamental?” he suggested. “What a fate for the child.” It was a tease that in better times would have made Demelza laugh. In better times, she would have teased him back. Not now. Now she glanced at him, one eyebrow raised, and offered no jest. Ross hastily tried to backtrack. “In seriousness, Demelza – do you not see a resemblance?”

“They both have dark hair, but by that measure Drake is like you.” Demelza tied off her plait and came to take his waistcoat from him. She shook it out, folded it, and put it over the back of the dressing chair. “No, Jeremy’s a Poldark, through and through,” she said. “Nobody could think him anything but your son. Your eyes, your hair –,”

“Your smile,” Ross insisted. The compliment seemed to soften Demelza, to soften the mood of the conversation, and when she smiled at him, it seemed warm and genuine. Ross was glad to see it. He had always loved to see her smile, and it was no false compliment he paid her – Jeremy did have her smile, wide and happy, the shape of his mouth so similar to Demelza’s. Ross wished he could do more to make her smile, but he was clumsy with her these days. He was so aware that they were both still wounded, so aware that she was still somewhat distrustful. He hoped he was regaining her trust, little by little, but the lack of it frequently made him irritable, and he had never been very good at pushing aside irritation. It made him short-tempered, impatient of mistakes – mostly his own – and discouraged him from trying. But he must do better; he must try harder. Demelza’s smile, her true smile that reached her eyes and made her look like a beam of sunshine, was worth his efforts. “Maybe that’s it,” Ross went on, belatedly. “The way you smile, the shape of your mouth…Drake is very like you, so of course I can see the relationship.” 

“We were always close, me and Drake,” she said. “Though he’s youngest, and I’m oldest.” She took his stock from around his neck, her fingers brushing across his throat. Ross let her do it, and did not object when she paused with one hand on his chest, her thumb hooked under his braces. He would never object, these days, to these quiet moments of closeness, so rarely bestowed. He would take what she would give him, and in return offer such pitiful crumbs as he could manage.

“You never speak of them,” he observed. “Yet you clearly care a great deal for Drake, even now.”

“Oh, well.” Demelza shrugged, and stepped away. Ross regretted speaking, but he couldn’t take it back now. “I knew he’d never grudge me getting away,” she said, as she put his stock with his waistcoat. “If it’d been the other way around, if he’d been the one to get out, I’d never have pulled him back. He knows I’d never go back there willingly, not while Father was living.”

It was on the tip of Ross’s tongue to remind her that she had, in fact, once been set to return willingly, and not so very long ago, but just in time he caught himself. Instead he said: “But you never spoke of them to me.”

“No. You never asked.” 

Ross could not deny the accusation, and so he accepted the chastisement without comment. Demelza went to her side of the bed, and pulled back the blankets, but she didn’t get in. Ross sat down at the end of the bed to remove his boots. When he had the first one off, he heard her sigh, and then she came to sit beside him.

“After our mother died,” she said, “I near raised Drake. He was such a small mite of a thing, not even weaned. I think, now, maybe it was having him that killed her.” Ross took off his second boot, slowly, and remembered how hard Jeremy’s birth had been for Demelza. How ill she had been, after her escapade in the boat, fishing in Nampara Cove. Dwight had worried for her for several days, but soon enough Demelza had recovered. Only her second child, but she was young yet, and they had resumed physical intimacies, so no doubt more children would come, in time. She had six brothers, he seemed to recall; seven children born to Tom Carne and his wife. What was Demelza’s mother’s name? He realised, to his shock, that he had never known. He had never asked. And now that he realised the lack of knowledge, he could not ask his wife – for how to admit that he did not know the name of her mother? “We were always close,” Demelza said again. “He was…he must have been nine, when I left. There’d been talk of him going down the mine, helping one of the men on tribute, learning the work. We needed the wage.”

Ross nodded. “Of course,” he murmured. “You must have missed him a great deal, when you came here.”

“Oh, I suppose.” Demelza shrugged, almost irritable. “It was a different life. All of that time. I came here and it was like – like I could open my eyes and see the world, for the first time.” And what a sorry world he had shown her, Ross thought bitterly. Loss and heartache, worry and uncertainty. Poverty, too, though of course she had rarely known anything else. “I didn’t ever look back,” Demelza was saying. “And when I did see Father again – even after he’d married and found God, I could never forget. T’isn’t a question of forgiving, it’s…it’s knowing he never had love for me. A father ought to love his children, shouldn’t he? Isn’t that how it should be?”

Ross touched her back, gently, on the place where he knew she still bore a scar from her father’s attentions. Demelza did not seem to notice. “He was a miserable excuse for a father,” he said quietly. “And from what was said earlier, I think Drake has far too much experience with that to ever grudge you not going back for a deathbed reunion.”

“And what he did at the trial!” Demelza exclaimed, as if Ross had not spoken. “Judas, I thought he’d walked you right into the noose – as if you needed help.”

“Demelza…”

“Oh…” Demelza lifted her hands and covered her face. “I’m sorry, Ross. I feel all…all stirred up with things I thought I’d forgot. T’was such a shock, seeing Drake. I’m that glad he came, for I have missed him, but ‘tis like a ghost come out of another life.”

“I can see that.” Ross wrapped his arm around her and dared to bring her closer to him, until her head was against his shoulder and he could feel her breath on his neck. “At any rate, you needn’t spare any of them another thought,” he said after a moment, when it became clear that Demelza was not going to push him away. “Certainly not your father. Perhaps – perhaps now that Drake has come once, perhaps you and he can see a little more of each other, once your father’s gone. Illugan isn’t far, by horse. You could ride over.”

“Maybe,” Demelza said, but he could hear the doubt in her voice. “Maybe so.” She stayed close to him, and Ross closed his eyes, the better to relish the sensations. The warmth of her, the way she leaned against him, as if she needed his support. It had been so many moons since she had last betrayed such a need. He didn’t wish away her strength, nor the ways in which she had grown and developed over these past few years, but some essential part of himself, some masculine pride, was glad of the appearance, at least, that she needed him. At length she sighed, and spoke again. “Anyway, there’d be no point my riding over there, even if it weren’t fixed for the wedding tomorrow,” she said. It sounded more as if she was speaking to herself than to him, so Ross remained silent. “Like as not he’d be dead afore I reached Illugan, and then I’d have wasted the trip for naught. Or little better than naught. Drake did give me news of the others, and perhaps it’d be nice to see them for a short spell. But I’ll not go racing to Father’s bedside. There’s no point to it. I misdoubt he’ll be wanting anything but to tell me how I’m a sinner and must repent.”

“You need not justify your decision to me, Demelza,” Ross murmured. “But you’re right; he might be dead before you got there. And we won’t be able to delay the wedding. The vicar cannot stay for long, and Dwight’s leave is short.”

“And I’ll not spoil it for either of them by being late,” Demelza said, as if she had come to some resolution, though Ross thought he could still hear doubt in her voice. He hugged her closer to him, and turned his head to drop a kiss to her forehead. It was instinctive, and she did not push him away, so he did it again, lingering this time, his lips pressed to the smooth skin just above her eyebrow. “I’ll maybe go over in a few days,” she added. “Once he’s gone. I was that glad to see Drake. I shouldn’t like to lose him again.”

“As you like,” Ross agreed. “Shall we – should you –,” He faltered. It had been so easy, before, to bring her to bed, to intimate that he wanted her, that he wanted to have her skin against his skin, to touch her and hold her and caress her. He had lost the easiness, and did not know how to regain it. But Demelza understood. She lifted her head and touched his lips with a finger, and smiled at him with her mouth and eyes both. 

“Yes, Ross,” she said. “We shall.”


End file.
